


Old Friends, New Foes

by Elendiliel



Series: Lightning Strikes [19]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Found Family, Gen, Rescue, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29400840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendiliel/pseuds/Elendiliel
Summary: A simple extraction mission for Lightning and Thunder Squadrons gets very complicated for the mission lead when a high-ranking visitor spots them. Or perhaps not so complicated, once she realises who and what he used to be.
Series: Lightning Strikes [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087898
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Old Friends, New Foes

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case it's not clear from the text, this is set a year after the battle of Yavin.

_No, please, no, not him…_

Jedi Knight Helli Abbasa managed to hold her position, ready to buy time for her team to reach their shuttle and safety, but it stretched her training to its limit with _that_ sound getting closer and closer. Everyone who had run up against Darth Vader and survived said that the first warning sign was his breathing, a rhythmical wheezing noise as his life support machinery compensated for the ruin some long-ago incident (nobody knew quite what, though there were plenty of rumours) had made of his lungs. If one were unlucky, the next signs would be blaster fire and plasma slicing through flesh. That didn’t apply in her situation. This was Imperial territory, and she was between Vader and all his other targets. Good for them; bad for her.

She could hear his footsteps now, too, the regular _click-click_ a counterpoint to his breathing. He was in no hurry. If he focused on her men and woman, they were dead. She had to prevent that at all costs. As he neared her hiding place, she stepped out and stood in his way, sabre in one hand, sheathed for now. (The cut of the Imperial officer’s trousers she was wearing might be ridiculous, but it _had_ made concealing her lightsabre easier. Not that there was any point in that now.)

“Helli Abbasa.” He had stopped a blade’s length from her, the eyes of his mask appearing to meet hers. Despite her altered appearance (pure white hair, caf-brown skin, Keshian eyes), despite two decades in hiding, he knew her for who, and of course what, she was. “I see the reports of your death were indeed exaggerated. I thought as much. Your tenacity is commendable; your judgement, less so.”

She extended her own senses towards him, trying to figure out how he had recognised her so easily. What she found froze her blood and momentarily stopped her heart. She didn’t want to believe it, but those senses had never failed her yet. And it explained why the figure she had glimpsed in Petro’s memories of the Temple massacre, on that distant day on Onderon, had seemed so familiar. Even so, the name she thought he once had came out as a question, not a statement. “Anakin?”

“No longer.” Anakin Skywalker – it was definitely him, somewhere under the suit and Dark Side corruption – drew and ignited a red lightsabre, holding it in an almost casual way. “The _Jedi_ you knew is gone. He was too weak to survive.”

“That’s not true.” Somehow Helli made the words a flat statement, not a disbelieving denial. “You _are_ Anakin Skywalker. Whatever Palpatine told you – he lied. The Dark Side is strong, but your light is stronger, or it used to be. What _happened_ to you?”

“I needed power. I needed to protect the ones I loved.” Anakin’s vocoder couldn’t handle emotion, but she sensed the shadows of grief, pain and fear. He needed to talk, and she was good at listening. And he thought she would soon be dead.

“Senator Amidala. And your son.” Helli didn’t have to think hard to work it out. “I’ve met him, by the way. He’s a credit to his parents. You should be proud of him.”

Anakin ignored the attempt to sidetrack him. “Then Padmé died, and Kenobi stole our son, but there was no going back. Nor do I wish to do so.” He raised his sabre into a fighting position. “The Jedi stand in the way of peace, even as you claim to maintain it. And _you_ stand between me and a traitor.”

Now Helli _had_ to ignite her sabre. She could see that reason alone would end with her death, and more importantly the deaths of her brothers and daughter. “Torrent isn’t a traitor. As far as I know, he’s the only clone in your army who’s actually managed to keep his oath to the Republic. _You_ used to believe in the Republic once, remember?” She shifted into a guarding position, waiting for him to make the first move. “And I’m sure you also remember that you could never beat me when we were padawans. What makes you think this time will be any different?”

He didn’t answer in words, but with a classic Form IV strike she blocked and parried without much conscious thought. He might claim to be all Sith, but no Jedi could fail to spot the source of his techniques. And he so clearly hadn’t had much of a challenge for at least a decade, bar Master Kenobi the year before and a couple of brushes with other less powerful exiles, whereas she had been training six apprentices at the same time, sparred with Anakin’s son Luke when they happened to be in the same place with enough time on their hands, and still ran up against the odd Inquisitor. She also now incorporated not just the Picti combat style she had learned as a young child, but the clone trooper skills her brothers had taught her, and some ISB-type moves courtesy of Alexsandr Kallus. Had she been fighting to kill, or even win, it would have been a deadly combination. But she would _never_ hurt her old friend, however corrupted he had become.

All she needed to do was slow him down and keep him focused on her even when her comrades came back, which they surely would. To that end, she let him drive her back into the open space outside the Imp base’s shuttle hangar, to where Gani could find her.

Which she did. The appropriated Imperial shuttle Helli’s Rodian apprentice had borrowed off the Spectres for this mission, _Phantom II_ , didn’t raise any red flags as it took off, but Helli knew her padawan, and was ready to push Anakin back with a Force-assisted parry just as the transport, landing ramp still extended, swept overhead. It bought her barely enough time to jump to safety as he moved forward to counterattack. As the ramp was retracted and the shuttle began to climb, Helli could just see her friend-turned-opponent overbalancing and almost falling face-first to the concrete. It shouldn’t have been as satisfying as it was.

The smug rather-you-than-me-mate smile became one of pure joy as she turned back to the primary object of the whole exercise. She hadn’t had time to greet him properly before – the extraction plan had been a swift in-and-out job, of the kind they had done so many times before, leaving little space for joyful reunions – but now it was all she could do not to wrap her arms around her beloved and kiss him until they were both breathless. Fighting back that overwhelming desire, she settled on, “Hello, _nerra_.”

“Hello, _numa_.” Torrent was clearly wrestling with the same feelings she was, even after twenty years apart. Giving in a little to the magnetic attraction that had only been strengthened by time, he pulled her into a close embrace, as befitted a meeting between a brother and sister who had been separated for so long, and she returned it with all the passion she dared to show.

They broke apart eventually and gazed at one another, a little sheepishly. Until earlier that day, the last time Helli had seen her sergeant in the flesh, he had been about to shoot her, unable to escape his conditioning completely. For her part, believing she was about to die, she had kissed him one last time. It hadn’t exactly been an ideal parting. But now they were together again, and in their right minds, more or less.

At last, Torrent cleared his throat and broke the increasingly awkward silence. “You’re looking well. I like your new appearance, though it might take a bit of getting used to.”

“I doubt there’ll be much chance. I’ve used this face too many times in a row. Need to change it. And you’re looking well too.” Torrent had been in one of the first batches of clones that formed the Grand Army of the Republic. Technically, he was thirty-three; physiologically, he should have been sixty-six. But the rigours of stormtrooper life, and possibly the intervention of their friend AZI-3, who had been sent to seek safety with Torrent when his previous “owner”, Shaak Ti, had realised too late the danger she was in, had stabilised his apparent age at around forty, the same as hers. AZI had also removed the last fragment of Torrent’s control chip, so Helli wasn’t worried about how he would react to her apprentices when they were introduced back at base.

Helli, Torrent, AZI, Fives and Spark (the rest of the strike team, bar Ganodi, still in the cockpit; the other clones and droid had kept a tactful distance at first) continued chatting to each other about inconsequential things as _Phantom II_ flew onwards towards the Rebel Alliance’s latest stronghold. Another successful mission for Lightning and Thunder Squadrons (well, parts of them). Torrent had been his brothers’ and sister’s man on the inside since the fall of the Republic, but after twenty years of channelling useful information to them, carefully “losing” harmful intel and dodging demobilisation, his luck had run out. ISB Agent Beck had finally put two and two together, but not fast enough or secretly enough to stop him signalling for an extraction. It had cut off a valuable source of intelligence, but his execution for treason would have done that too, and was unthinkable to boot.

Mon Mothma had been surprisingly amenable to the idea of bringing an ex-stormtrooper to their base. She knew what Torrent had done, and risked, for the past two decades, and had been familiar with Lightning Squadron since they had all been loyal servants of the Republic, back when that had meant something. All that had remained had been to borrow _Phantom II_ off Hera Syndulla, use Torrent’s own recon data to work out the fastest way to get in, meet Torrent and AZI and return to the shuttle without too much trouble, and obtain two sets of stormtrooper armour (not a patch on clone armour, according to Fives and Spark) and two Imperial uniforms, plus matching IDs and a holographic matrix projector to make Gani look human if anyone got curious. It had worked beautifully, up until Anakin had intervened. Torrent hadn’t known he would be there. Lord Vader, as he was usually addressed, was a law unto himself.

But they had got away with it. As they re-emerged in realspace and descended towards the Alliance’s temporary home, Helli let herself rest her head against Torrent’s neck, one arm around his shoulders and vice versa, AZI peering over her shoulder as they watched the planet’s surface approach, enjoying the last few minutes before the endless round of debriefings, training and new missions began again. They didn’t need to speak for the moment. It had been quite a day, what with old friends, expected and unexpected, and new information on a new foe. New to them, anyway. Helli had the feeling she hadn’t seen the last of Anakin. She’d been lucky to escape him that far. Ah well. Now she knew what to expect, and she still had hope that the foe might become pure friend once more.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Nerra_ is Twi'leki for _brother_ , and according to an online dictionary I found _numa_ means _sister_ in the same language.
> 
> This story now has a companion piece, "Best Laid Plans" (Part 23 of _Lightning Strikes_ , Part 7 of _Storms and Rebellions_ ). It's not exactly a sequel or prequel, but it may be of interest.
> 
> (By the way, if there's an established SW parallel for "sheepishly" I'd be grateful for that knowledge. I don't like using Earth-rooted terms, but I couldn't think of a good replacement in this case.)


End file.
